The two-inch-long trout is small and slightly flattened, like a crucian carp, and more like a miniature bream. Trout are the most grass-roots fish in the water, often congregating in gentle flowing water to feed, and are easily caught by various nets. The trout, which has never been looked down upon, is also called "trout", because this small fish has a very large belly, and once it squeezes out that large mass of belly, the body immediately becomes empty.

A bunch of small fish are caught in the hot summer, and the trout always rots quickly in their stomachs. Probably trout are the easiest to trap with broken rice bran, so they are also falsely called "chaff chaff fart", "chaff chaff fart" This slang is specially used to ridicule the little people to see the big world.

Trout is a fish on the skin of the water, very easy-going, dare to get close to people, but also close to people. In the midst of the green aquatic plants, flocks of trout swim unhurriedly. Their mouths are closed one by one, and sometimes they inadvertently flutter around, and their scales glow in the sunlight with a multicolored psychedelic light, which is very beautiful.

The trout has a rather eccentric habit of dragging an inch-long streamer under the belly of its tail during the breeding season, which is its spawning tube. When it chooses the right mussel on a blind date, the oviduct will reach into the mussel shell to lay eggs, and the eggs will develop into juveniles before leaving the mussel. Almost at the same time that the trout spawning tube is inserted into the mussel, the young mussel, which has been smothered in the shell, leaves its mother and attaches itself to the trout to parasitize until it can become independent. Therefore, trout and mussels have a symbiotic and win-win relationship that complements each other.

It is said that when Yan Zhenqing was the assassin of Huzhou, he and Zhang Zhihe tasted a trout five or six inches long, and they were shocked by the behemoth among the trout. But in our hometown, there is a kind of trout, with a broad body, the size of an adult's palm, and the most conspicuous feature is a large signature white spot on the pectoral fin, especially under the caudal fin, which looks very much like the flag in tropical fish. This large trout loves to swim in flocks in the pelagic layers of the current in search of food. Sometimes you're sitting on a boat and you can't notice some pale cyan shadows flickering and disappearing, just before you can see the iconic black and white pectoral fins.

"Eight eels, nine crabs, ten trout, eleven or twelve eat crucian carp. "This is a food proverb I heard in southern Jiangsu, and I was very strange at the time. We people here are generally reluctant to eat trout, because this thing is really inconspicuous, and it is especially easy to rot the stomach and get a bitter smell that cannot be washed. No one specifically catches these small fish, and the trout that are caught with the nets are usually given away for free when they are sold for other fish. To clean up the trout, you only need to pinch your belly with your hands, squeeze out the belly intestines that are wrapped in a ball, and then slightly batch the scales with your nails.

However, if it is not rotten belly, after such a fresh small fish is washed, fry it in oil to preserve its shape, put enough water to grind the pepper and braise it, burn it until the bone spurs are crispy, and sprinkle some coriander powder, the taste is delicious, completely different from the big fish. Pick one into a bowl, the meat drizzled with red soup is fragrant and fine, and the meat on the back and belly of the belly is gently removed with your teeth, and then you can feel the peaceful deliciousness of that small fish. If you pour yourself a cup of dry red with a little taste, with a trout on the head of the chopsticks, drink it slowly and chew it carefully, and the aftertaste is very long. "New Year's salmon, February meat, sell the land and taste it. "I know a friend from Huzhou, and this proverb he said may be the proof. It's no wonder that more and more people don't like to eat serious big fish, but instead look for some messy small trash fish to adjust their taste.

In those riverside restaurants in the water towns of southern Jiangsu, from the perspective of the recipes, the cooking methods of trout are braised and steamed, made into soup, stewed and dry stir-fried, and so on. That time I went to Tongli, the ancient town, and was entertained with a meal full of water town characteristics. In the cold dish, there is a salt-and-pepper trout, which is placed in a small rattan basket lined with light blue paper towels, which is not much in number, fried, and served with finely chopped dried red peppers and dried tempeh, which is crisp and raw, and is tough and chewy, and quite flavorful.

In the summer, when you stand barefoot in the water to wash rice and vegetables, a large school of small fish will soon come running after you to eat the broken vegetable leaves and broken rice grains, and tickle and peck at you. If you sink a rice basket or vegetable basket under the water, you can see that many black shadows have penetrated into it, and if you lift it suddenly, you can pick up a handful of small fish seedlings that are not much longer than a matchstick. The minnows with fingers are completely different, they have seen the world, they are experienced, they always swim nimbly around where you can't reach them, and when you move, they twist their tails and make a splash and they dodge.

When the neem tree blooms clusters of small purple and blue flowers, summer has arrived. In the morning or evening when the weeping willows are blowing the water, there are always many young and young people with excellent interest in the meal minnows swimming in circles, stirring up the clear waves. "Brushing minnows" has become a common sight in summer. This is usually some half-grown boys, but there are also adults playing with technical work. Thin rods and fine lines, maggots, rice grains and flies or something to make bait, and do not need floats, all by quick eyes and hands, see the meal minnows swimming around, and throw the bait over. The minnow thought it was a small insect in the water, swept a beautiful arc, pecked the bait, you "brushed" the ground and waved the rod, and a shiny fish hung alive under the rod. The level is high, and it is lifted up without stopping, so that the viewers next to it can see it with relish.

If it is a deep water area, there is a meal minnow called "white mouth", the largest even has five or six catties, silver scales and white belly, green back arched, mouth warped and big, swim fast, there is a "white strip in the waves" reputation. This kind of fish is accustomed to chasing some mosquitoes, flies and moths on the water, and it is particularly ferocious when it eats, eating it when it is in its mouth, and running away when it pecks. When you see a black shadow flashing and the fishing line is sinking, you have to quickly "brush" the rod.

In the family of meal minnows, the members are complex, the size is very different, there are pointed mouth meal (flat), round head, yellow lang, red, meat, and a kind of belly with a layer of golden halo body fat fusiform oil. Their common characteristics are that they have a simple shape, are good at swimming, live happily, love to join in the fun, and jump out of the water from time to time to make a splash for you to see. In short, where the water sounds, there are them.

If you are impatient to "brush the minnows", you can get a wire net, pull it straight into the water, and then sprinkle some chaff. It didn't take long for many dark cyan shadows to swim and swim in the water, constantly changing and scattering, and the water surface was full of chatter. When the chaff on the surface of the water is pecked away like a cloud, the wire mesh is pulled up, and each mesh is dripping with water droplets, if the net is shining silver, it is the embedded gluttonous person struggling in vain with his slender body. I took it home and pinched the internal organs, removed the scales, washed it, and fried it in oil, and of course the taste was fresh. The fly in the ointment is that there are a lot of thorns in the meat, and it is delicious only when the meat is cooked together with the thorns.

There is a local saying in my hometown that ridicules people who are anxious to do things, called "carrying the tail and frying the fish". If you want to make the minnows special, frying is the key. Heat the oil pan, arrange the frying one by one, don't let the heat be too big, be patient, fry one side yellow, and then turn it over and fry the other side. Until the pleasing golden brown is fried, the square shovel is stacked into a pile, poured cooking wine, plate sauce, water mill pepper, put in refined salt, ginger, garlic, cover the pot and cook over low heat until crispy. If you salt the finger-thick small meal minnows a little, then drag them with flour and fry them, the entrance is extremely crispy, including the fish tail.

There is a steamed white fish dish in the restaurant, and the standard way to write it should be "steamed fish". The fish is the big meal minnow, "the mouth is white", and the people of Shanghai and southern Jiangsu call it "white silk fish", which is famous for its delicious meat, rich nutrition and taste like the saury in the river. Although the "upturned mouth white" swims quickly in the water, it dies when it comes out of the water, so the market price is expensive. Steaming pays attention to raw materials, focusing on maintaining that bit of freshness. Wash the fish and chop it into two sections, add a small amount of salt and marinate for a while, and in general, you can add seasoning and cooking wine, and steam it in a rice cooker. After steaming, the meat is very tender, so it feels like it has many spines and is stiff, and although it is not as tangled and intimidating as the knife fish bones, it is also troublesome enough for people who can't eat fish.

Meal minnows are best dried in the sun, unlike trout and crucian carp, which only have shells when dried. If you catch too much, you can't eat it all at once, and after salting, you can dry it and store it. When you want to eat, put it on the rice pot and steam it, it is moderately salty and fresh, and it is very bitten, and it is very good for rice. Generally speaking, there is no fish in the mountainous areas, but whether it is Huangshan, Jiuhua Mountain or Tianzhu Mountain, I see whole bags of dried minnows in the local specialty shops that sell dried bamboo shoots and dried mushrooms, and when I look at the labels, they all indicate that they are green food from local mountain streams. I don't know how much water it would take to catch the many minnows of all sizes, and the yellow-brown color of the oversalted water must be a far cry from the taste of the little salted fish we used to have in our native days.